Ecija, innovation as a weapon against the coronavirus

TMT law firm ECIJA has promoted and participated in the development of new technological tools to help better cope with certain aspects of the impact of the pandemic on our daily lives

Among them, is the legaltech solution for electronic signature to certify the labour, professional or business nature of the trips made by essential services workers during the state of alarm, and the free tool SOS COVID-19. This is the first collaborative platform at an international level to organize help around the coronavirus, easily connecting requests for help from hospitals, nursing homes, regional governments or municipalities, with private individuals and companies. Those involved in both solutions told us what the main challenges of both developments have been.

ELECTRONIC SIGNATURE

By Alonso Hurtado, IT, Risk & Compliance partner at ECIJA

This legaltech solution was born as an initiative of ECIJA and 3GMG in order to make a system, available to all citizens, capable of generating travel authorization certificates for people who are in some of the situations for which the royal decrees regarding the state of alarm allow mobility, in a completely remote and secure way. The initiative was born approximately 10 days before the publication by the government of a standard and static authorization model in the Official State Gazette, without such publication being accompanied by a system for the official and centralized generation by the State of this type of certificate, something that has occurred in other countries, such as China, Hong Kong, Australia, Panama or Chile, among others.

The system proposed by ECIJA and 3GMG has so far enabled several thousand citizens to enjoy an electronic certificate that they can carry on their mobile devices, or also print it on paper with all the guarantees of identity, integrity and traceability of the authorization issued by the authorizing entity/person, in order to be able to prove their status as authorized persons.

From the legal point of view, the main aspects that had to be guaranteed in a system such as the one proposed were the identity of the signatories and the fact that the authorisation was duly signed by the parties involved. Therefore, the technology used is fully aligned with the requirements of Articles 8, 25 and 26 of Regulation (EU) No 910/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 July 2014 on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market and repealing Directive 1999/93/EC (eIDAS). ECIJA has made its knowledge of this technology available in order to ensure that it complies with the regulatory requirements, generating electronic evidence with the maximum legal effectiveness possible under the circumstances.

So far, the certificates have had a very good welcome and even specific and personalized platforms have been generated for different business groups, which are issuing their certificates through this same platform, but in a specific, personalized and dedicated environment, as well as carrying out other electronic document signature processes. This legaltech solution is part of the group of technologies developed by ECIJA, together with different manufacturers and developers, both own and external, which aims to streamline the identification processes and electronic signature, as a simple, effective and efficient way to automate processes that until now were performed in person.

Having said this, ECIJA has also implemented the use of advanced electronic signature technologies in its processes, which are now widely used in the electronic signature processes of all the documentation required to carry out the temporary layoffs (ERTE) or the signing of service provision contracts with clients and suppliers.

COLLABORATIVE PLATFORM SOS COVID-19

Por Cristina Villasante, IT/IP manager at ECIJA

This is an initiative in which ECIJA has collaborated with an intermediation platform through which the needs that organizations may have in relation to the health crisis generated by the COVID19 are made visible so that any person or entity that has the means to do so can attend to these needs in an agile way. For example, if an organisation or hospital needs blankets, it can register on the platform and publish its request so that any donor, whether an airline or any other entity, which may have such blankets, can contact that organisation and agree on how or where to deliver the blankets.

To carry out this initiative, it has been necessary to draw up legal texts for the platform to regulate the relationship between users (whether “requesters” or “donors”) and the owner of the platform itself. Thus, we wrote and described the platform operation, taking advantage of the system of responsibility as an intermediary service in accordance with the Directive on Electronic Commerce and the Law on Information Society Services, in the corresponding general terms and conditions of use of the platform and legal notice. In addition, we had to regulate, by means of the corresponding data processing order contract, the above-mentioned data processing that was carried out in the platform, between the person in charge of it and the technology company in charge of maintaining it. Finally, depending on the purposes for which users and entities data registered on the platform, we drew up the corresponding privacy policy. The collaboration between all the companies that have been involved in this initiative has been key to its success in such a limited space of time.

To read the article in full please download issue N.94 here